A System for Sharing Household Heat Is Growing Beneath France

Small towns across America are leading the shift towards renewable energy. Part of a series called "American Futures", this video visits Kansas, Pennsylvania, and California to learn more about green initiatives in biofuel, wind, and solar power. Although each solution is different, each are a new way of generating income for the residents of the towns and often comes with societal acceptance as well.

Climeworks is focusing on pulling carbon dioxide directly out of the air to store or reuse in some capacity as a way to lower global greenhouse gas emissions. The Swiss company has 16 plants around Europe, with their biggest one in Switzerland that removes 900 tons of carbon dioxide a year that is then sold to Coca-Cola Co. to put in soft drinks or to local industrial greenhouses for plant growth. Scaling the operations to capture more carbon is costly, but the startup recently raised $76 million from investors.

Are rocks the answer to decreasing the scale of carbon dioxide production across the world? These scientists think so - or at least that these rocks have the potential to play a part in this mission. Carbon mineralization, a process unique to peridotite rocks found primarily in Oman but also in California, Papua New Guinea, Albania and a few other locations, could help combat climate change if the acceleration and scaling processes can be determined.

An economic shift to renewable energy could take decades, but thanks to rapidly evolving disruptive technologies, dropping prices of solar and wind power sources, and increasing market demand for green business, the new age of renewable energy could encompass the world economy much more quickly.

In Stockholm, old Christmas trees are being converted into biochar. When integrated into the city's highly-efficient power grid, the project has been wildly successful--not only in improving soil, but also in retaining groundwater, greening the city, and lowering carbon emissions. For this reason, officials as far away as California have been eying the plan with interest.

Dams make for complex and often controversial infrastructure. While hydropower generated from large dam projects is currently providing the bulk of the planet's renewable energy, dams can also cause major environmental and social damage by interrupting animal migrations, displacing indigenous communities, and collecting toxins. A number of solutions are being implemented, however, to address the various issues caused by dams, to help make them a more eco-friendly and viable source of clean energy.

In Boulder, CO, a group of concerned citizens and the city have been paving the way for the city of Boulder to be free of fossil fuel energy by 2030. Along the way, they are pressuring the state and the utility to go green with them, painting a bigger picture of how the utility industry is responding to climate change.

Rahr Malting, a brewery in Shakopee, MN, has found a creative way to sustainably address their energy needs. The company partners with the Mdewakanton Sioux Community to use waste barley hulls from the malting factory to generate electricity for their facilities, selling excess power to the public grid while the waste heat sprouts the malt to make beer.

Inspired by the Dutch concept of “Energiesprong,” or “energy jump,” a developer in France retrofitted a group of townhouses for social housing to be more environmentally friendly. They installed polyurethane facades to avoid heat loss and solar panels on the roof. Upgrading the units to be more green cost more than a conventional retrofit, but over time, energy bills were cut in half. These green retrofits are being implemented in towns around the world and could be a model for developers that want to reduce their carbon footprints.

In a science class in a local New Jersey school, students came up with a green solution to a storm water management and flooding problem in their parking lot when it rained. With help from the Cooperative Extension Water Resources Program out of Rutgers University and funding from city agencies, they were able to build planters and install concrete to absorb the runoff. The project galvanized the community, encouraging the school to expand their STEM curriculum.